Statistical consulting with Zombal

This is a guest post by Benedict Noel of Zombal. Many statisticians do a little bit of consulting in addition to their main job, and Zombal provides a way for people to find such work.

Zombal: connecting freelancers with projects

Zombal is an online marketplace for freelance work in the maths and sciences. Employers (aka “launchers” on Zombal) can post project listings for free, and candidates (aka ‘catchers’) bid to fulfil projects if they have the appropriate skill set. Candidates can also populate their profiles with their skills and experience and employers can browse and approach preferred candidates. If the launcher wants to engage a candidate, based on resume and/or further communications, the next step is to purchase credits which are locked to the job guaranteeing that the work is paid for upon successful completion (with some room for mediation in the case of dispute).

Although the site is still in its infancy, so far the most successful type of work has been related to statistics and applied mathematics. The majority of statistical work that has been posted is from small companies who don’t have the budget to employ a permanent statistician. Statistical work that’s been successfully fulfilled via Zombal include the creation of statistical models and survey questionnaires as well as analysis of data using packages like SPSS or languages like R. Statistical work has been carried out for a variety of sectors ranging from medicine to finance. A couple of examples of statistical projects completed through Zombal in these sectors include determining the risk of early-onset basal cell carcinomas based upon statistical data and regression analysis of data from stock and FOREX markets.

Next — connecting freelancers with not-for-profits

Currently we’re looking at ways we can start connecting statisticians with not-for-profit organisations, many of whom desperately need to improve their statistical practices and methodologies. We see this as a win-win situation for both the statistician and the not-for-profit: Statisticians get real world job experience and also a good referral on their resume, while the not-for-profit receives much needed assistance pro-rata or at a reduced rate. We began our first trial last week with African not-for-profit Young Africa Live, and following this pilot, we hope to organically grow the number of not-for-profits that utilise our service.